By Teresa J. Frith
If you do vermicomposting and have a large worm bin that produces more worm castings that you need, you may wonder if you can sell the excess and find out how much $ are worm castings worth per pound.
Firstly, worm castings are actually the worm’s poop. These make a very high quality and rich organic soil amendment that’s considered to be one of the richest natural fertilizers in the world. In fact it only takes about a tablespoon of worm castings to fertilize a six inch potted houseplant for about two months.
Many folks will pay you good money for these castings, as well as buy your excess worms for doing their own vermicomposting or for fishing bait. Depending on how many worms you have, they can produce quite a bit of castings in just a few weeks. For instance, if you have about 2,000 worms, they will generate about seven pounds of castings in a month.
So, how much could this net you in profits if you decide to sell the castings? For one thing, it likely costs you almost nothing to feed your worms since they are likely eating mostly scraps from your kitchen. The worms eat scraps like vegetable peels, fruit cores, coffee grounds (even coffee filters), etc. and in return produce the castings.
If your worms are producing well and the castings are of a high quality, then you could possibly sell the castings for anywhere between about .10 a pound to upwards of three bucks a pound for average quality castings to between .18 to upwards of five dollars a pound for higher quality castings. It all depends on if you sell them in a bulk format or if you decide to sell them at something like a farmer’s market in small bags where you could charge more for your product.
You can also choose to sell the worms themselves. For instance, night crawlers have been known to bring around $30 a pound in some locations. It takes around 350 to 400 worms to make a pound. If you sell them for fishing bait, you can likely get an average of around two dollars for a dozen worms.
They key thing to getting top dollar for your worm castings is to make sure you are growing healthy worms that produce copious amounts of castings. The sky’s the limit and it’s only dependent on the room you have to raise your worms and the time you want to put into selling them. Good Luck!